Search results for "ancient"

Sello alimentario romano relacionado con Juno Sospita procedente del SE Hispano

2017

Roman alimentary stamps have an iconography that sometimes is difficult to interpret. In this paper, some valuations on the images displayed on both sides of one of these objects, namely an example belonging to a private collection in Murcia, are offered. In its original publication a relation to agrarian cults through motifs that would refer to the goddess Ceres was proposed. However, it is a composition having its closest parallels in a series of Roman Republican coins issued in 64 bc by Lucio Roscio Fabato. These denarii are mainly linked to Juno Sospita and secondarily also to the Egyptian cults of Mediterranean expansion. Therefore we evaluate the possibility that such religious intera…

Paleogenetic and morphometric analysis of a Mesolithic individual from Grotta d'Oriente: An oldest genetic legacy for the first modern humans in Sici…

2020

Abstract Grotta d’Oriente, a coastal cave located on the island of Favignana (Sicily, Italy) is a key site for the study of the early human colonization of Sicily. Inside the cave, during different field excavations, three burials attributable to the Late Upper Palaeolithic and Mesolithic were found. The Mesolithic Oriente B individual, directly dated at 9,377 ± 25 uncal BP, was previously assigned to HV1 haplogroup using a traditional approach. However, it is well known that PCR based methods are prone to erroneous haplotype or haplogroup determination. In order to redefine the mitochondrial lineage of this Mesolithic hunter-gatherer and explore its phylogenetic position, we target-enriche…

The genomic history of the Iberian Peninsula over the past 8000 years

2019

We assembled genome-wide data from 271 ancient Iberians, of whom 176 are from the largely unsampled period after 2000 BCE, thereby providing a high-resolution time transect of the Iberian Peninsula. We document high genetic substructure between northwestern and southeastern hunter-gatherers before the spread of farming. We reveal sporadic contacts between Iberia and North Africa by ~2500 BCE and, by ~2000 BCE, the replacement of 40% of Iberia's ancestry and nearly 100% of its Y-chromosomes by people with Steppe ancestry. We show that, in the Iron Age, Steppe ancestry had spread not only into Indo-European-speaking regions but also into non-Indo-European-speaking ones, and we reveal that pre…

Genomic transformation and social organization during the Copper Age–Bronze Age transition in southern Iberia

2021

Description

Characterization of recent marks produced on fossil bone surface during sullegic and trephic processes and their influence on taphonomic studies

2018

Different taphonomic processes throughout the history of a fossil assemblage may preserve, modify or destroy, particular palaeobiological traits, but these processes always increase taphonomic information of the past. Similarly, fossils are affected during later stages of taphonomic history, i.e. excavation, preparation, study and storage of fossils, known as sullegic and trephic phases. Tools used during excavation and preparation of fossils can damage them and produce marks on their surface. Some of these recent marks highly mimic taphonomic marks produced before excavation. Both modern and fossil marks lead to misinterpretations and erroneous conclusions when similarities are not clearly…

Jaws and teeth of the earliest bony fishes

2007

Extant jawed vertebrates, or gnathostomes, fall into two major monophyletic groups, namely chondrichthyans (cartilaginous fishes) and osteichthyans (bony fishes and tetrapods). Fossil representatives of the osteichthyan crown group are known from the latest Silurian period, 418 million years (Myr) ago, to the present. By contrast, stem chondrichthyans and stem osteichthyans are still largely unknown. Two extinct Palaeozoic groups, the acanthodians and placoderms, may fall into these stem groups or the common stem group of gnathostomes, but their relationships and monophyletic status are both debated. Here we report unambiguous evidence for osteichthyan characters in jaw bones referred to th…

The Bronze Age in France

2013

Dietary evidence from Central Asian Neanderthals: A combined isotope and plant microremains approach at Chagyrskaya Cave (Altai, Russia).

2021

Neanderthals are known primarily from their habitation of Western Eurasia, but they also populated large expanses of Northern Asia for thousands of years. Owing to a sparse archaeological record, relatively little is known about these eastern Neanderthal populations. Unlike in their western range, there are limited zooarchaeological and paleobotanical studies that inform us about the nature of their subsistence. Here, we perform a combined analysis of carbon and nitrogen stable isotopes on bone collagen and microbotanical remains in dental calculus to reconstruct the diet of eastern Neanderthals at Chagyrskaya Cave in the Altai Mountains of Southern Siberia, Russia. Stable isotopes identify…

Spatio-temporal dynamics of genetic variation in the Iberian lynx along its path to extinction reconstructed with ancient DNA

2017

here is the tendency to assume that endangered species have been both genetically and demographically healthier in the past, so that any genetic erosion observed today was caused by their recent decline. The Iberian lynx (Lynx pardinus) suffered a dramatic and continuous decline during the 20th century, and now shows extremely low genome- and species-wide genetic diversity among other signs of genomic erosion. We analyze ancient (N = 10), historical (N = 245), and contemporary (N = 172) samples with microsatellite and mitogenome data to reconstruct the species' demography and investigate patterns of genetic variation across space and time. Iberian lynx populations transitioned from low but …

Ancient DNA reveals the Arctic origin of Viking Age cod from Haithabu, Germany

2017

Knowledge of the range and chronology of historic trade and long-distance transport of natural resources is essential for determining the impacts of past human activities on marine environments. However, the specific biological sources of imported fauna are often difficult to identify, in particular if species have a wide spatial distribution and lack clear osteological or isotopic differentiation between populations. Here, we report that ancient fish-bone remains, despite being porous, brittle, and light, provide an excellent source of endogenous DNA (15-46%) of sufficient quality for whole-genome reconstruction. By comparing ancient sequence data to that of modern specimens, we determine …